An Alliance for those who enjoy letter writing and postal adventures.

February 24, 2017

Stamp Release Round-Up: February Stamps

February is full of postage treats indeed. Those shells! Those patterns! And just like I predicted, the 5cent grapes are being made available in sheets. When they were first released, you could only get them in a large (and expensive) coil. We can expect to see a re-release on the 10cent pears in a more digestible format as well. My least favorites of these can be all described as "patriotic." I know there are people out there who love flag stamps, I'm just not among them. Ditto for JFK. Those Oscar de la Renta stamps are gonna look FANCY on my Springtime mail, for sure. And I love the look of Dorothy Height's stamp. How are you planning to use these new releases? Will the seashells usurp the birds on your postcards?

I actually like the birds, but the post office near work only had the shells, so I've got a sheet of them. I need to acquire more nice postcards, so that I have more occasion to use them.

Also: I confess to being a little confused about the way things went with the grape stamps. I thought that, perhaps, selling them as large coils was a way to encourage philately "distributors" to buy them; maybe someone will buy 500 stamps at 5¢ if they know they can sell them to collectors for 6¢ each. But, if it's general knowledge that you can generally just wait a couple of weeks and get a sheet of them, that reasoning doesn't hold.

I mean, *are* there folks who genuinely need so many small-denomination stamps that buying hundreds at a time makes sense? (Pardon the newbie questions, please; I'm actually pretty new to letter writing as a hobby, so a lot of things about the postal system are kinda taking me by surprise. Which is sorta fun, in an oddball way.)

Dorothy Height went very well with my pink colored stationery this month :) Her purple is great! I didn't realize that the Oscar de la Renta stamp was actually a sheet of designs--I thought it was just one of those black & white person photos like the JFK one! Now I'll have to get those! I already have my new seashells to use, but am waiting for summer to put them on all of my vacation postcards :) Now we just need those WPA stamps...!

I think the shell postcard stamps look better (brighter) in person. The Oscar de la Rente sheet is also better in person - firstly, I didn't think the stamps would be quite so large, and secondly computer images don't do the colors justice.

The wait was more like a year and a half for these to move from coil to sheet and they dont always. I think it does have to do with larger mailing operations, but it can just feel frustrating to regular postal enthusiasts.

The low value coil stamps are often purchased by some charities that send out requests for donations. The return reply envelope enclosed in such a mailing will have several low face value stamps applied to it so it doesn't cost you anything to mail it back to them. I've read that this is done to generate more responses ("this organization spent money on these stamps, so I should send them a donation"), but I don't know for sure.

You can sometimes order strips of stamps from the big coils by using the phone number or order form in the USPS sales catalog, "USA Philatelic." For example, the most recent edition of that publication offers either a coil of 10,000 of the 5¢ grape stamp, or a strip of 500. That's still a lot of stamps, but it's more affordable than buying an entire roll!

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The L.W.A. was established in 2007 by Kathy Zadrozny & Donovan Beeson. These two ladies manage every aspect of the Alliance, from design, to packing orders, to maintaining the website. The L.W.A. is a labor of love and we are happy you have joined us in sharing a love for letters.